An Essay A Day For A Year
By Roe
Day 78, March 18, 2012
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When I was young rascal I dreamed of high adventure, and high adventure was anything that was not in the house or in front of the TV. On our black and white TV there was lots of adventure going on, moon landings, presidents and students and civil rights leaders getting shot, and even shooters of presidents getting shot. But as high adventure as it was, it was still black and white and in two dimensions. I guess I grew up in a strange era, back before the turn of the century and millennium, where kids still went out and played. Nothing could ever compare with a little boy’s high adventure in summer with the gang of other kids in the 1960’s and 70’s. My neighborhood was filled with Hippies and their hairy girlfriends who didn’t have much on, and a hundred other things that were cool. In the summer I would leave the house as soon as I could wolf down my corn flakes, and I only came home when I heard my dad screaming my name for dinner. If I stayed at home I was expected to make myself “useful”, which was a euphemism for being a slave to my parents, doing “work”. Work and Yuck came from the same root word to me when I was a kid. Today work that I don’t want to do and Yuck ARE the same word.
Now at 49, I have many, many adventures under my belt, lots of exciting countries, and many awesome disasters. I have a life full of lots of cool oohs! and ahhs!, and I am making more all the time. I have seen lots and lots of hairy and hairless girls who didn’t have much, if anything at all on, way better than when I was a boy in the 60’s, and lots of other wacky trials and tribulations. I have finally grown up to BE the adventure that I spent a boyhood dreaming about. I guess it all sounds alluring and romantic, and I often get people remarking, “wow, I have always wanted to do that, you are so lucky”. When I hear that my eyebrows usually go up, and I realize that I am being perceived like Neill Armstrong on the black and white two dimensional moon on TV. I know that Neill, like me, was not lucky, but in fact earned every millimeter of his adventure the hard way. Here is what he and I say: “Houston, we have a problem. Neill and I are crazy MoFo’s with very, very big balls, and we are willing to sacrifice all for our ambitions and dreams”.
I really think I am a frady cat in truth, and I am afraid to face your life. If I get to meet the Wizard of Oz, it is not courage that I will ask for. I think I will ask for your life, because I think it is you who is lucky. When I hear people sighing with envy or “I wish I woulda, coulda, shoulda’s”, I always say the same thing. I say, “well, there’s nothing to it but to do it!” Just go. Just jump. Just get on with it. The answer I get is, “well I’d have to cash in my IRA and then rent the house and put everything in storage and then get my shots and then plan the trip sensibly and carefully and then what about my wife and gee the kids have their friends and the picket fence needs painting and I don’t know if my boss would let me, and I don’t want to risk my retirement, and . . . . . . uh, isn’t it dangerous?”
Then I tell one of my stories of true adventure, of spending the night freezing, in a leaky tent on a mountain pass between volcanoes in Mexico, with a broken down motorcycle, having a .45 caliber pistol stuck in my face and having what little I own stolen, going without food for a day and a half, being all alone and afraid, and raging at the person stupid enough to coin the word “adventure”. I add that I have no job, no retirement, no insurance, no house, no picket fence, and no high falutin possessions or comfort to enjoy or display to the Jones’ next door. Adventure does not have the letters “eat your cake and expect to have it to” in it. Adventure has the expression “get prepared to eat doo doo and like it”, built right into it.
No, I am not lucky, and no, neither are you. We get what we want, we get what we earn, and we are who we dreamed of being. It is mandatory that you accept that right now. Your life is here and now, and you are who you are here and now. Your own personal acceptance is part and parcel of your life, and if you are lying to yourself, then your life is a lie, and then you are not who you think you are. To envy another is not to be satisfied with self, and to not be satisfied with self means that your very self comes into question. Yes, you can tell your boss to take his job and shove it. Yes you can walk away from your house and all your possessions and never look back. Yes you can take your beautiful or bitchy wife with you or divorce her, yes you can take the kids or drop them off at your parents’ house. Money is not necessary for adventure, neither is preparation or safety or health or timing or yada, yada blah, blah, blah. All it takes is, “just do it”. If you are not happy, then it is time to get your priorities straight, and it is time to make sacrifices, and some big and hard ones. Accept now that you cannot have what you want, or when you want it, or where you dream of, or how you think of it. If you want to float on the wind, you must eject from your precise airliner now.
“Well I can’t just do that”, is simply a lie. What you mean is, “well it just isn’t that important or valuable enough to me to do or have X if I have to give up so much A, B, C, D, and E. I say who needs an IRA or retirement or job or even clothes, when you will be living with a bunch of head shrinkers in Borneo. I say that it is important to accept and admit that what the lovely wife wants is important to you, and not having to listen to whiny teens swatting malarial flies in India is important to you. The new two-slat pickets on your fence are much subtler than the three slat variety, especially when the latest BMW i model can be seen through them. Pretty flowers adorn your new sod lawn, which is now finally visible since the 350 channel satellite antennas have gotten so small, are all supremely important to you. Monday night football with the boys from high school is indispensible, but it cannot compare to the latest Victoria’s secret nightie that adorns wifey on Friday nights, right there in your perfect Posture Pedic mattress.
In fact I am impressed by all people, and I often long for a real normal, planned out, and simple life. But I accept that while you are happy with the remote control pointed at lucky Neill jumping onto the moon, I am still amassing the world’s largest collection of discarded construction wood for my hand built scaffolding to go the moon my way. I am not lucky or fortunate, and neither are you. We are who we are and we have made ourselves that way. And if this is not true, it is time we eat some doo doo to become and make happen what we want and want to be, because we cannot change without sacrifice and suffering. I am impressed by you, and you me, and we wish we could at least eat half of each other’s cake, and still have the other half, and call it a great, compromised life.
Here is a better idea: I wish that you would fix my motorcycle in the cold rain, find the thieves and get my things back, go and stock up on crappy food, find someone to talk to on that mountain pass between volcano’s in Mexico, and continue my adventure to south America for me. Me, I want to watch the game on the plasma screen in your new BMW i model, and then see what color that nightie from Victoria’s Secret is on wifey. I’ll just wait for you right here on that perfect Posture Pedic. Gee, you are so lucky.
See you tomorrow.
yourpersonalmuse@gmx.com
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